A family friend who I referred to PNT some time ago called me puzzled today, as he said he'd been called by PlusNet about slow-downs they had noticed and asking him for various details in order to investigate further.

I told him to tell them nothing and that it was probably some sort of scam.

So, my question is whether he is alone in this experience, or if PNT are actually calling up customers after monitoring their connections? (Which I obviously doubt very much, having worked there myself in the past.)

I asked him to get a phone number to call them back on if they call again -if they do, I'll share it so somebody can investigate / pass on to the appropriate authorities.

As far as I know he hardly uses the Internet at all! Maybe once or twice a month he checks email. Line speed and other such terminology means nothing to him.

Last time I spoke to him, he had the laptop's wireless antenna switched off and was using a LAN cable (as instructed by some useless PNT support agent). Took me less than a minute to sort, but that's not the point -it illustrates his complete lack of experience / understanding... (...of what even "wireless" means!)

Just thought it would be quicker to ask here than post a formal ticket on his account. (I assumed there was still some formal presence in here that could advise with some authority.)

It could be those scam calls claiming that they are investigating your computer running slow and wanting you to go to a web site so they can install their software. There has been plenty of those recently and they ask for you by name so I would think its more likely that than plunset calling.

I'm pretty sure if it really was Plusnet calling about something seen on his line, then they'd have opened a ticket about the call. If you are able to log into his tickets you will be able to quickly see if it was genuine or not (by the presence or absence of matching ticket).

We've been visited three times by those good people at T-T since this exchange (Llantrisant) was upgraded to allow FTTC. We've got FTTC from PN and are delighted but T-T do seem a little confused. The normal thrust of their conversation is something like thy've come to pick up something which was left by BT - such as a product dossier (!). I'm not with BT, I'll tell them and then they go through the rigmarole of asking about my provider and saying that £21 a month is very expensive for telephone calls. They always finish with the information that if I'm being charged for the Internet, that's wrong as the Net is now free since 'they' upgarded the excange. Yesterday's man even said that T-T now own the exchange in Llantrisant!

I guess he's going on what T-T have told him to say but I worry that some people will be taken in by this kind of poor selling.

That kind of blatant miss-selling should be reported to the ombudsman and Ofcom. They should be prosecuted. I don't understand why they didn't ban those kind of door-steppers when they had the chance. (Well, I do, but that's corruption for you!)

Oh if I could only copy and paste the exchange I posted internally between myself and a TT doorstep salesman.

I am a pizza lover and it's one time I was glad to let my pizza go cold.

In regards to calling customers, we did at one time trial this before we moved to the current building. Using data supplied from BT showing "chronic flapping" lines (lines which have been capped at 0.5, 1 or 2mbps sync speed on max), we would call to review what may be causing it.

Generally, the stuff that causes this cap (thousands of resync a day), would mean the customer will have had connection problems they could see. The majority of them also already had open or initial fault reports.